1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mixed jobs generation method and an apparatus thereof. Particularly, the present invention relates to a mixed jobs generation method (and apparatus) for executing printing and binding (bookbinding) processing requested by a user by creating jobs using a combination of different types of printing and binding apparatuses. More particularly, the present invention relates to a storage medium storing a computer program for causing a computer to implement the mixed jobs generation method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Printed and bound products have conventionally been produced by plate offset printing such as offset printing. These days, plateless digital printing methods typified by electrophotographic printing are becoming popular in addition to the plate offset printing. Advantages of plate offset printing are low cost and high printing speeds in large-volume printing. However, in plate offset printing, printing and binding are done by the section gathering a set of pages, so the range of pages corresponding to each section must be determined before making plates. If the range of pages changes, all plates must be remade again.
On the other hand, one advantage of plateless digital printing is variable page printing capable of outputting different contents by the respective copies. This feature is represented by VDP (Variable Data Print).
A traditional printing company performs processing after switching the suitable printing method (plate offset printing or plateless digital printing) in accordance with the type of received order job from the beginning.
These printing methods take the following ideas to increase the processing efficiency.
Plate offset printing adopts a system which automatically performs pagination in order to achieve imposition by each section. Therefore, this system can efficiently create a layout in plate offset printing (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 63-085559).
Depending on the order receiving system of a printing and binding job in the current market, a part of received document data may not be determined until just before the document data is printed. To cope with this, there is a system capable of visually editing pagination and managing the progress of each page (see, e.g., Japanese Patent No. 3294184).
To the contrary, plateless digital printing can easily insert variable pages. An editing application which visually edits the output form can efficiently create a layout for output from a digital printer and divide a job (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-296070 (FIG. 11)).
Recently, as the running costs of digital printing devices have decreased and their speeds have increased, even fixed pages but in a small number of copies can be printed at a lower cost and within a shorter delivery period by plateless digital printing than by plate offset printing. As plateless digital printing devices prevail, demand arises in the market for printing of different outputs by respective customers. As for this demand, however, not all pages of a printed and bound product contain variable printing elements. It may be disadvantageous for the cost and delivery period to process all pages as a plateless digital printing job on the grounds that plateless digital printing can execute variable printing. In contrast, plateless digital printing (though printing is not VDP) may be more advantageous than plate offset printing in terms of the cost and delivery period when printing some pages of received document data which are not determined until just before the document data is printed.
In plate offset printing, there is also proposed a method such as selective binding of inserting different section at the same collation position even when data contains a variable printing element (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 09-207320).
In this situation, a printing company must select whether to process a received order job by plate offset printing or plateless digital printing. The printing company is troubled about the trade-off between plate offset printing and plateless digital printing. Hence, there is a need for a method of generating mixed jobs that is efficient for both the cost and delivery period by utilizing the advantages of both plate offset printing and plateless digital printing. In other words, a user wishes to generate mixed jobs effective in reducing the cost and/or shortening the delivery period.
Generating efficient mixed jobs is achieved by generating printing and binding jobs so as to print pages for a large number of copies with fixed contents by plate offset printing as much as possible, to print pages with variable contents by plateless digital printing, and to combine these printed pages into one book. Alternatively, generating efficient mixed jobs is achieved by generating printing and binding jobs so as to print only a part of a printing and binding job by plateless digital printing when the part leads to cost reduction and shortening of the delivery period in comparison with plate offset printing.
However, according to the above-described conventional systems, when both plateless digital printing and plate offset printing are mixed, pages subjected to plateless digital printing must also be edited before pagination. That is, the progress of preparation of variable printing parts affects that of fixed printing parts. A plurality of pages are printed at once on one sheet for the section. Thus, the range of pages for the section must be determined not to contain any variable page requiring plateless digital printing. It is, therefore, difficult to generate mixed jobs for implementing a efficient combination of plate offset printing, plateless digital printing, and bookbinding in consideration of these factors.
For example, the pagination in plate offset printing is applicable to mixed jobs generation, which pagination is the premise of automatic pagination described in JPA 63-085559 or JPB 3294184. However, the section type is fixed in the pagination of plate offset printing. It is, therefore, difficult to generate efficient mixed jobs even if directly applying this pagination technique for the mixed jobs generation combining plateless digital printing.
An editing application which performs visual editing as described in JPA 2003-296070 can dynamically create the layout without any problem, that depends on the feature of plateless digital printing in which no plate is made. Therefore, even if the editing application is directly applied to the mixed jobs generation combining plate offset printing, it is difficult to generate efficient mixed jobs.
Problems in mixed jobs generation have been described above by examples of the mixed jobs generation using plate offset printing and plateless digital printing in printing and binding processing. However, problems in mixed jobs generation are not limited to them. These problems are common to even a general mixed jobs generation method, in which it can obtain an effective result of how to combine a plurality of processing methods having the same purpose, but a relation of trade off in cost reduction and/or shortening of the delivery period. The present invention indents to solve problems in a general mixed jobs generation method.